Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J., will share how compassion, kindness, and kinship are the tools to fight despair and decrease marginalization. Through his stories and parables, all will be reminded that no life is less valuable than another.

8:30pm – 9:00pm - Questions and small group sharing

9:00pm – 9:30pm - Book signing with Fr. Greg Boyle

9:00pm – 10:00pm - Reception: Hors d’oeuvres and cash bar

9:00pm – 10:00pm - Exhibits Open

Thursday, November 2

7:30am-8:30am - Breakfast

8:45am – 9:00am – Morning Prayer

9:00am – 10:30am - Workshop Session I

A. Practicing Healing and Community Building in a Racially Biased World

Amy Hunter, Manager of Diversity and Inclusion, St. Louis Children’s HospitalThis workshop will address the need for community building and uncovering the truths of systemic and institutionalized racism. You will gain insight on how to build community, stay in community and expand community. Along with the understanding of racism is pain. This worship will examine the pain and ways to "heal" and process pain.

Bryan Sokol, Director, Saint Louis University’s Center for Service and Community Engagement

Many universities offer immersive educational experiences to provide students with direct, hands-on learning opportunities to promote civic engagement and cultivate social responsibility. This presentation and workshop focuses on changes in college students’ civic, social justice, and diversity attitudes, comparing (1) immersion experiences to a matched group of students involved in other university programs, (2) pre-to-post assessment of the impact of immersion experiences, and (3) cohort differences regarding the stability of attitudinal change over time. We will discuss ways to prepare and follow-up with students to maximize the growth potential of immersion experiences, as well as strategies for measuring the impact and success of immersion programs

C. Cultural Humility

Andrea Sawyer-Kirksey, Director, DOOR Chicago

In this workshop we will address the importance of cultural humility when entering various cultural spaces. While cultural competency implies the ability to achieve full competency and knowledge of diverse cultures, cultural humility emphasizes the importance of continual personal reflection and growth. With no ideal of completion, cultural humility focuses on a mutually beneficial lifelong learning process.

D. The Work is Ours: How Care and Accompaniment Help with Retention of Volunteers

Maggie Naughton, Associate Director, Lasallian Volunteers

Our volunteer programs are inherently about formation of young people entrusted to our care. Care and accompaniment by staff are crucial in the success of the time that the volunteers spend in community and ministry. During the session, I will share the steps we take to provide this to our volunteers and what you can do in your programs to maintain healthy volunteers, successful cohorts, happy site and community directors, and students and clients who are getting the best service we can offer.

E. Culture of Mission and Philanthropy

Come and discover how mission informs our philanthropic relationships! Our donors never cease to amaze and astound us with their generosity. We ask people to give because someone, at some time in our life, asked us to give. We ask people to give because we are convinced our mission is worth their support. We help our donors fulfill the deepest desires of the heart to love God and neighbor as one’s self. Our ministry is first and foremost about relationships. It is about being of one heart and one mind. It is our relationship to God, to the mission of Jesus and to all our brothers and sisters. It is an invitation to be and build communities of faith, hope and love. Jesus taught us that we cannot do it alone. Our donors and all of us need communities of acceptance and support and place to find our common voice.

F. The Mentor’s Way: Eight Rules for Bringing Out the Best in Others

Based on the speaker's book of the same name, The Mentor's Way is an engaging workshop that helps leaders be mentors. Participants will explore the rules of mentoring that help them form meaningful and powerful partnerships that promote growth and learning for their protégés. They will learn that the best mentors "Lead by Following", empowering their protégés to drive the partnership and "Balance Empathy and Action" to work through difficult problems.

G. Peace Circles and Restorative Justice

Alison Archer & Deirdre Kleist, Amate House

Peace Circles are gaining international recognition as effective tools in the work of restorative justice. While most often thought of as a means for addressing issues of serious conflict, peace circles can actually be used in many different contexts to facilitate open, candid, and respectful sharing among a diverse group of people. In this session, learn some of the basic principles of peace circles and draw on the experiences of the facilitators to see the ways in which you could incorporate this sharing process into your own service program.

H. Vocational Discernment

Sr. Adrienne Kaufmann, Vocation Director, Mother of God Monastery

This workshop will explore models for mining the potential of the volunteer experience to uncover insights into personal call. To view oneself as purposefully created, and to discover the intersection point where "one's deep gladness meets the world's need" (Parker Palmer) is to know one's vocation. A volunteer program can contribute a great deal toward the unfolding of a volunteer's understanding of her/his life call. This discernment, however, does not happen automatically. With a little planning and few materials, a discernment component can be intentionally incorporated into the volunteer experience.

I. A Network Not of Wires but of People: Technology for Evangelization

Technology and social media are huge parts of our culture and our world. As Catholics, we need to harness that power to bolster our work in our organizations, but in a way that is appropriate for the needs of our work. Making better use of our websites and social media presences, we can connect with potential volunteers and alumni who we may not have reached before. This session will explore the practicalities of creating and maintaining an active web presence and how to be up-to-date with technology.

J. Sending Volunteers Abroad – Management Considerations in the Preparation, Placement and Accompaniment of International Volunteers

This workshop will review the practical aspects of managing an international volunteer program and will address issues of vetting, preparing, orienting and supporting volunteers abroad. The workshop will address: vetting during the application process, orientation for new missioners to go outside the U.S., immunizations/health insurance costs, visa processes, safety issues and emergency response, building supporting communities, ministry placements, and funding needs. Tools and worksheets will be provided for workshop participants and participants will be encouraged to share strategies they have used in their own programs.

K. Creative Volunteer Recruitment Strategies

Sada Lindsey, Grants Manager, Lutheran Foundation of St. Louis

This workshop will look at historical methods of recruitment, new strategies using social media/technology, and discussion regarding tactics that have worked, didn't work, and how to market your program as desirable for those seeking to serve.

L. Evaluating Volunteer Programs for Success

Rick Skinner, Volunteer Center, United Way of Greater St. Louis

Volunteers do amazing things for others. How do you know, though, if your volunteer program is achieving positive results? This workshop will help answer your questions related to providing a meaningful assessment and evaluation of your organization’s volunteer management program and process. Learn from the region’s leader in volunteer management as well as from each other to help determine what you need to evaluate, how to assess volunteer satisfaction and community impact so that volunteers will keep coming back for years to come.

M. Creative Community Nights & Continuing Volunteer Development

Mary Pimmel-Freeman, Director, Vincentian Mission Corps

Volunteer formation doesn’t have to be limited to orientation and retreat times. Weekly community nights provide an ideal opportunity to help volunteers grow and deepen in their understanding of program values. Inviting local speakers to enjoy community night with volunteers enriches the volunteer experience and promotes wide spread support of the volunteer program. Speakers can be drawn from a variety of places and engage volunteers on topics connecting to program values. Get ideas for building a formation program that teaches volunteers how to seamlessly incorporate program values into their daily lives…during their year of service and beyond!

N. Vocational Discernment – Is that You, God? A guide to Prayer and Hearing God’s Voice

Lori Harris, Director, YWAM Kerygma USA

Learn how to deepen your volunteer's relationship to God and help them become more aware of discerning His voice. It is an important part of growing anyone's personal faith and encouraging others to do the same, from the youngest to the oldest!

O. For the Love of Millennials: Promoting Post Grad Service on Today’s College Campus

Kate Daly, Boston College and Sr. Julie Fertsch, St. Joseph Worker Program

In this workshop, we will explore the joys and challenges of accompanying current college students as they discern full-time service. We will look at cultural expectations, parental involvement, and other influences impacting their decision-making. Please bring your questions and your experiences as we navigate together how to best support this incredible generation of young people. Programs and college personnel warmly invited.

Mother 2 Mother began in September 2014, by Dr. Christi Griffin, founder and president of The Ethics Project, as a means of creating understanding, healing and solutions to racism and over policing in the African American community.

3:00pm – 3:15pm – Break/Visit Exhibits

3:15pm – 4:45pm - Workshop Session IV

P. Spaciousness for the Soul: Letting Our Lives Speak

Tony Vento, President, Purpose Matters

Spend some time renewing your heart, mind and spirit through an introduction to the reflective practices of Courage & Renewal, developed by Parker J. Palmer, PhD, best-selling author of Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Hidden Wholeness and Courage to Teach as well as Healing the Heart of Democracy. Experience an inclusive Circle of Trust to journey toward deeper integration of your “soul and role,” reconnecting who you are with what you do. This fuels wholeheartedness and purpose, which are the antidote and preventative for burnout. What you learn in this session can be used with full-time volunteers to encourage their self-care, calling, and wholeheartedness.

Q. Compassion and Community as a Response to Trauma

Mike Morgan, Director of Operations, DeSales Service Works

In this workshop, participants will reflect on the numerous forms of trauma that affect our individual and communal life. In the context of helping volunteers navigate such trauma, we will review Gospel-based prescriptions for healing from illness, separation, and loss through death.

Although many faith-based service programs are affiliated in some way with a religious community, formation in the community’s charism and tradition can be challenging, thus hindering the intentionality necessary for effective community building. Borrowing from the tradition of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, this workshop will offer concrete tools for short-term intentional communities to identify, adapt, and implement charism-based religious practices into their own context.

S. Introduction to Centering Prayer

Jim McElroy, Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis

Centering Prayer is a receptive method of silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God's presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship.

T. A Network Not of Wires but of People: Technology for Evangelization

Technology and social media are huge parts of our culture and our world. As Catholics, we need to harness that power to bolster our work in our organizations, but in a way that is appropriate for the needs of our work. Making better use of our websites and social media presences, we can connect with potential volunteers and alumni who we may not have reached before. This session will explore the practicalities of creating and maintaining an active web presence and how to be up-to-date with technology.

Saturday, November 4

America was founded by the near-genocide of one people and the enslavement of another. Since that foundation, the United States has now confronted the realized structures and systems put in place at the outset. Soon, in only a few decades from now, the United States will be – for the first time in history – a majority of minorities. This fact underlies much of the political rhetoric and discourse we now see. This session will look at that reality and how “white Christians” need to become more Christian than white